A Case Study N. 1 Developing Language Stage

Developing Language Phase
Case Study 3: N
1. Interpretation
During today’s evaluation, we used the Preschool Language Scale- Fifth Edition (PLS-5) and general observations of N’s play skills and social interactions to assess his speech and language abilities. The PLS-5 is a norm-referenced test, meaning that the creators of the test developed a set of “average” scores based on a large sample of children, to help us determine whether a child, like N, performs at the same level as other children his age that were included in the sample. The test examines two areas of language abilities. The first area is auditory comprehension, which refers to skills such as N’s understanding of things said to him, like numbers, spatial words, simple commands
Specifically, N demonstrated marked difficulty with naming high-frequency items and objects. During administration of the PLS-5, he was unable to name most colors and named barnyard animals with 33% accuracy. N’s parents noted that he has difficulty learning new words. According to Pence and Justice (2008), children N’s age should be using approximately 1,000 to 1,500 words. Targeting expressive language using a core vocabulary approach for high-frequency concepts and words, like colors and animals, will help N to stimulate further vocabulary growth and increase the length of his utterances. Core vocabulary should be selected based on pertinence to N’s daily life and preferred activities and incorporate words that will concurrently target phonological processes, as to decrease N’s instances of final consonant deletion, cluster reduction, gliding, unstressed syllable deletion, assimilation, and stopping. This will in turn improve N’s communicative power and speech
According to Pence and Justice (2008), children ranging from 36-60 months consistently use these morphosyntactic markers, as well as exhibit use of deictic and relational terms. During the assessment, N did not demonstrate use or understanding of age-appropriate deictic terms, relational terms and article, including: quantitative concepts (some, more, most), spatial prepositions (under, in back of, next to), pronouns (his, her, they, he), personal deixis (I, you), and negations. Similarly, N did not understand Wh- questions during assessment, specifically “what” and “where” questions. According to James (1990), children should be able to comprehend “what” and “where” questions around 2;0 – 2;6. Comprehension of these question types are important in partaking in every day conversation with other people and will be significantly important to understand as N enters